Black Forest Labs vs Groq: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of Black Forest Labs and Groq — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Updated July 2026.
Black Forest Labs
FLUX — the new standard for image generation quality
Black Forest Labs created FLUX, a family of image generation models that have rapidly become the quality benchmark for open and commercial image generation. FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra produces photorealistic images at high resolution.
Groq
LPU-powered inference — the fastest tokens per second available
Groq runs custom Language Processing Units (LPUs) that deliver dramatically higher throughput than GPU-based inference — Llama 3.3 70B reaches 750+ tokens/second on Groq, versus 100–200 on typical GPU providers. Ideal for latency-sensitive applications, real-time chat, and high-volume batch workloads.
Key metrics
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Live token pricing
Strengths & weaknesses
Black Forest Labs
Groq
Key differentiators
FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra produces some of the highest-quality AI images available, consistently outperforming Stable Diffusion and competing with Midjourney on photorealism benchmarks.
Groq's custom LPU chips deliver 750+ tokens/sec on Llama 3.3 70B — 4–5× faster than any GPU-based provider.
Frequently asked questions
Black Forest Labs FAQs
What is FLUX?
FLUX is a family of image generation models from Black Forest Labs. FLUX.1 Dev and Schnell are open-weight; FLUX 1.1 Pro and Pro Ultra are commercial API models offering the highest quality.
How does FLUX compare to Stable Diffusion?
FLUX consistently outperforms Stable Diffusion 3.5 on image quality benchmarks, particularly for photorealism and prompt adherence. FLUX Schnell is also significantly faster than SD 3.5.
Groq FAQs
How fast is Groq inference?
Groq delivers 750+ tokens/second on Llama 3.3 70B and 1,200+ tokens/second on Llama 3.1 8B. This is 4–5× faster than typical GPU-based providers, making it ideal for real-time applications.
How much does Groq cost?
Llama 3.3 70B costs $0.59/1M input and $0.79/1M output tokens. Llama 3.1 8B is just $0.05/$0.08 per 1M tokens — among the cheapest options for a capable open-weight model.
What is a Groq LPU?
A Language Processing Unit (LPU) is Groq's custom silicon designed specifically for sequential token generation. Unlike GPUs which are optimised for parallel matrix operations, LPUs excel at the autoregressive decoding step that dominates LLM inference latency.
Provider resources
Black Forest Labs — FLUX — the new standard for image generation quality
Black Forest Labs created FLUX, a family of image generation models that have rapidly become the quality benchmark for open and commercial image generation. FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra produces photorealistic images at high resolution.
FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra produces some of the highest-quality AI images available, consistently outperforming Stable Diffusion and competing with Midjourney on photorealism benchmarks.
Groq — LPU-powered inference — the fastest tokens per second available
Groq runs custom Language Processing Units (LPUs) that deliver dramatically higher throughput than GPU-based inference — Llama 3.3 70B reaches 750+ tokens/second on Groq, versus 100–200 on typical GPU providers. Ideal for latency-sensitive applications, real-time chat, and high-volume batch workloads.
Groq's custom LPU chips deliver 750+ tokens/sec on Llama 3.3 70B — 4–5× faster than any GPU-based provider.
Key strengths compared
Black Forest Labs
- ▸State-of-the-art image quality
- ▸Open-weight dev/schnell variants
- ▸Fast inference on schnell model
Groq
- ▸750+ tokens/sec on Llama 3.3 70B — fastest GPU-class inference
- ▸Sub-100ms time-to-first-token for real-time applications
- ▸Very competitive pricing on open-weight models
Provider category context
Black Forest Labs is a frontier lab, founded in 2024. Groq is a inference api, founded in 2016. Black Forest Labs as a frontier lab trains and serves its own proprietary models. Groq as an inference API provider hosts open-weight models — typically offering lower prices for equivalent capability tiers but without access to proprietary frontier models.
How to choose between them
Choose Black Forest Labs if you need state-of-the-art image quality. Choose Groq if you need 750+ tokens/sec on llama 3.3 70b — fastest gpu-class inference. For high-volume production workloads, run a cost comparison using the token pricing table above with your actual prompt/completion token ratio — the cheapest provider depends heavily on your input-to-output token ratio.